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Wednesday, March 19, 2014

There’s no doubt a three-game losing streak when the Devils needed a three-game winning streak has dealt a significant blow to the team’s playoff chances. While acknowledging that, Devils GM Lou Lamoriello is not ready to write off this season, yet.

The important thing right now, Lamoriello believes, is to put the consecutive losses to Florida (5-3), Tampa Bay (3-0) and Boston (4-2) in the rear view mirror and focus on Thursday night’s game against the Minnesota Wild.

“There’s no question the Florida trip was not something that was positive for a lot of reasons, but that’s in the past,” Lamoriello said today. “All we can do right now is get ready and worry about tomorrow. Our fate is in our own hands. We’re certainly in a race and we have to just focus on what we can control. Yesterday is yesterday and today is today. Tomorrow is tomorrow and tomorrow happens to be the most important game at this point.

“Every game we play is important.”

Multiple Devils mentioned after Tuesday’s 4-2 loss to Boston that the necessary “effort” wasn’t there. Lamoriello wasn’t interested today in reviewing what went wrong Tuesday. There will be time for that kind of evaluation after the season.

“I’m not going to get into what was and what wasn’t because then I’m not going forward,” he said. “Right now, we know what we didn’t do, we know what we have to do and what we have to do is go out and do it.”

The Devils have only 13 regular season games remaining and sit five points out of a playoff spot. Devils coach Pete DeBoer said the team needed “10 or 11” wins to have a chance to make the playoffs.

Winning 10 of 13 will be a tall order for a team that has won three in a row only once this season, but Lamoriello continues to say he believes this team is good enough to qualify for the postseason.

“I believed in this team prior to the (trade) deadline. If not, then I wouldn’t have handled it as I did,” Lamoriello said. “I believe in right now, but we have to go out and prove it.”

Lamoriello also reaffirmed his belief in the coaching staff and the job it has done this season.

“I’ve said this often,” Lamoriello said. “They’ve handled several different situations with new players at the beginning of the year. Once we got on track, we were going in the right direction. The last couple games, unfortunately, are a bad taste for all of us. Right now, the only thing we’re focused on is not what job one did or what job one didn’t do. It’s the job we have to do tomorrow.”

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.